Motivated by the current (2011) political climate in Wisconsin it seems reasonable to devote some time and effort to comment on issues and some of the hyperbole. So we in the public should do what we can to help focus "journalists" on delineating real facts versus spin. If you accept the spin you do not understand the policy implications.

I have been waiting for "the media" to bring this fact out. I suspect that it is next to impossible to provide onsite hospitals, doctors, healthcare professionals or even a dentist or chiropractor in those counties let alone an insurance company interested in developing a marketplace. That does not mean you cannot have healthcare coverage -- just means you are going to have to go a long way to see a provider.

Approximately 38,000 Obamacare enrollees now live in places where no health plans want to sell Obamacare coverage in 2018. This is a small fraction of Obamacare enrollees — about 0.3 percent — who mostly live in rural, sparsely populated areas.

Aaron Albaugh peers out from under the brim of his cowboy hat, surveying the acres of hay fields in front of him. The fourth-generation rancher is raising about 450 cattle this year, in this remote corner of Lassen County, California.

Living a half day's drive from civilization, you learn to do without, he explains. If your refrigerator breaks, you put your food on ice until the weekend when you can go buy a new one. With health care, it's the same thing.

The theory of cognitive dissonance—the
extreme discomfort of simultaneously holding two thoughts that are in
conflict—was developed by the social psychologist Leon Festinger in
the 1950s. In a famous study, Festinger and his colleagues embedded
themselves with a doomsday prophet named Dorothy Martin and her cult
of followers who believed that spacemen called the Guardians were
coming to collect them in flying saucers, to save them from a
coming flood. Needless to say, no spacemen (and no flood) ever came,
but Martin just kept revising her predictions. Sure, the spacemen
didn’t show up today, but they were sure to come tomorrow, and so
on. The researchers watched with fascination as the believers kept on
believing, despite all the evidence that they were wrong.

“A man with a conviction is a hard
man to change,” Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter
wrote in When Prophecy Fails, their 1957 book about this
study. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or
figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails
to see your point … Suppose that he is presented with evidence,
unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what
will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only
unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than
ever before.” ...

Seems like the above is the nicest
thing you can say about President Donald Trump and his alter ego ...
Sean Spicer (what an ironic last name).

This doubling down in the face of
conflicting evidence is a way of reducing the discomfort of
dissonance, and is part of a set of behaviors known in the psychology
literature as “motivated reasoning.” Motivated reasoning is
how people convince themselves or remain convinced of what they want
to believe—they seek out agreeable information and learn it more
easily; and they avoid, ignore, devalue, forget, or argue against
information that contradicts their beliefs. ...

Again anyone count how many times
President Donald Trump has been described as doubling down! WOW!

The sad truth about President Donald
Trump ... or is it a fact ... it is circular ... he believes himself!

What are the manifestations/consequences ...

And in modern America, one of the
groups that people have most intensely hitched their identities to is
their political party. Americans are more politically
polarized than they’ve been in decades, possibly ever. There
isn’t public-opinion data going back to the Federalists and the
Democratic Republicans, of course. But political scientists Keith
Poole and Howard Rosenthal look at the polarization in Congress. And
the most recent data shows that 2015 had the highest rates of
polarization since 1879, the earliest year for which there’s data.
And that was even before well, you know.

Party Polarization, 1879-2015

See the graph ...

There is more to the article ... a very good read! After you finish it try this...